


Coup d'etat

by Sleekit



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-24
Updated: 2014-06-24
Packaged: 2018-02-06 00:32:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1837816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sleekit/pseuds/Sleekit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jareth finds his subjects to be fractious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coup d'etat

They're coming. I can hear them through the walls, the disgusting little monsters. Who thought they could be governed? Why else put them in this ridiculous labyrinth, so they can't escape and spread their gibbering madness throughout the world? I am dredged in horror. I cannot move. I stand before the pier glass in my tower room, observing my own delicious ruin, knowing I deserve every imprecation the mad creatures spit and fume. I am worse than they imagine--and I laugh to think what an asylum this place will be when they finally overrun it.

That stupid girl. She might have saved us. She might have saved me, had she not developed a sense of self preservation and entitlement. What's one baby? One human child, more or less. Christ, you have seven billion of your kind swarming the planet. What difference could one soft-skulled, unfinished human baby make? I only wanted it to make it like me, and so leave it behind so I could get free of this place. "You have no power over me." Ah, that's what you think, my little morsel. You'll never get me out of your head now, will you?

They're coming. Madness seethes in their wake.

Once, as you probably well know, I was the son of a duke, a powerful fairy among the Unseelie clan. I won't bore you with the details of my life, so allow me to sketch it in broad strokes: white stone castles in semi-permanent twilight, amethyst gardens numberless, and vast, glittering ball rooms where shimmering people dwell in a sort of eternal sarcastic splendor. Pearly light, lace ruffs, cool ennui, that sort of nonsense. Edmund Dulac on heroin. Nothing that is not beautiful. A coral and aquamarine watercolor world, a gloomy mezzotint reigned by menacing ink sketches. In popular mythology, nothing is forbidden at the Goblin Market. Why then was I cast out, consigned as a lord over the grotesque and bizarre? I'd say it was a mystery to me, but I'll tell you: not even Lords of Fay tolerate the sorts of debauchery in which I indulged. Certainly--steal human children, seduce human wives (and sons), do whatever moves you, but meddle with one Fairy child, and your life is utterly ruined. Dogs won't even acknowledge your existence. No one thinks to put out a bowl of milk on Midsummer's Eve for a ruined fairy. It just isn't done.

They're in the upper halls now, flat feet slapping on sandstone floors, snarling for blood.

The stupid bastards think I'm cruel for imposing rules and laws. They were living in their own filth and too useless to crawl out. Madness is endemic here. With what little power was left me, I forced them to clear out the streets and waterways. I was responsible for the Great Gate, though you wouldn't guess how difficult it is to get goblin metalsmiths to work together on anything. And why? Why did I sacrifice my long years and my beauty to this hovel built on a bog of stench? Love. I ruled them because they needed me, and if I was harsh--there was the Oubliette, after all, and worse (the Pit of Hands). I gave myself utterly in service. The situation called for a strong touch, and since the Unseelie weren't paying any attention to what their black sheep son got up to, I used everything in my power. Goblins of this sort need to be disciplined. They need to fear. And I gave them reason, didn't I?  
I crouch in my window seat and set my crystal spheres spinning. One floats here, one floats there, all with beautiful images of my past. I think fondly of silver masques and mad fetes. There is one image of the girl in the gown I gave her (and I would have given her so much more, had she not been a fool). What has she now? Some dreary existence, mother to teenagers, a mini van, a fat husband who farts and burps in his sleep. Every now and then I know she thinks of me. How could she avoid it? What glamour does she know now, except in dreams? If she had only agreed to let me rule her, I'd have made her a terrible queen over a hideous realm.

Happy, you ask? Well, of course, why not? What could make anyone happier than to have everything they've wished for?

May the Horned One save me, they're here. The door bursts. The floor seethes with bulbous eyes and flabby hands and grotesque talons crusted in the filth of sewers. Red mouths open on broken teeth, fangs, coiling fat tongues. I hear one howling in the distance, and at his voice the ancient stones of my tower begin to crumble. One very stupid doglike goblin with pretenses of knighthood takes the lead. "No more tyranny!" he shouts, and waves a ridiculous toy sword. I draw myself up in my owl robes, pale as death, and they fall back, frightened, like the idiots they are. 

"Get out," I tell them, with a grand menacing gesture. "Before I boil the blood in your veins, before I turn your guts into ravening weasels! Be gone, before--"

The dog knight lifts his toy sword. The ugly swarm moves forward in a rush upon my tusked throne. They're on my legs, my arms, pulling me down into a swirling, shouting mass. I draw a breath to cry one last imprecation, and a torrent of filth pours down on me. More and more swill arrives in buckets, in goat skins, in shields carried like bowls. I cannot die, they know that, and yet--

Yet. They are encasing me in the Bog of Stench. Immortal I am, and evil, admittedly the worst of my kind, and yet, they pack me into the cold brown mud. It enters my nostrils, my mouth, my beseeching eyes.

Have I not given you everything you desired?


End file.
